Clock Makers are hard to come by; they are most likely already employed. However, a true Clock Maker is always looking to improve their situation as well as situation of others. What they want is a challenge, “But it will cost you”! Before hiring a “Clock Maker” you have to decide if you are committed to revolution. That is what they will stir up within your organization, a “Revolution”! It will not be a commitment to change. Change, is a “Buzz” word that floats across industries and is consistently used by consultants and wannabe Clock Makers. In other words, they are straddling fence, one foot is on change side and other is on the, “continue to operate same” side. What we must do is strive for “Revolutionary improvements by taking evolutionary steps”! And it must begin at top! We must force leaders within our organization to become “Clock Makers”! Especially in our warehouse! Because, they are usually least educated people within company. I don’t mean education from a traditional standpoint; I mean what they have learned since High school or College. How many books have they read on logistics? How many seminars have they attended about warehousing and inventory control? How many associations do they belong to? Probably, none, none and none! And believe it or not we promote lack of continuing education by not giving them opportunity to revolutionize warehouse. When they try to attend a seminar, we shoot them down by saying, “It won’t provide any value and company won’t pay for it”. Yet sales personnel attend seminars; we have consultants and motivational speakers come in and speak with our sales force and look at how much we have grown by doing so. If it helped your sales force can’t it help your warehouse?

Right now, you probably have someone hiring and firing warehouse personnel who has never attended a course on interviewing techniques or labor laws. You have someone controlling millions of dollars of inventory that could not tell you last time they attended a course or read a book about inventory control. And we wonder why our inventory is so inaccurate. You have someone “Non-Verbally” communicating with your customers, more than anyone else in organization, and they do not even know who your most profitable customers are. And often we justify this by saying, “they are doing a good job!”

The next time you take a physical inventory and you look at numbers, accuracy of it will tell you how good of a job they have done. The next time a sales person tells you about a customer you lost because of shipping errors, that will tell you how good of a job they have done. The next time you look at turnover in warehouse, that will tell you how good of a job they have done. The next time you look at number of returns you process, that will tell you how good of a job they have done. And finally, next time you walk through your warehouse and you see receiving that has not been completed for a few days, and personnel that do not seem busy, that will tell you how good of a job they have done. Ultimately, it will tell you if you have hired a “Time Keeper or a Clock Maker”!

Your people will not treat your customers better then they are being treated! If that statement is true, and you believe your warehouse plays a valuable role in maintaining your current customer base, then ask yourself this question. How do you treat your warehouse? Do you have a lot of turnover? If so, then how can we expect our customers to be loyal when we can’t even get our employees to remain loyal? Edward Deming said, “Our prevailing system of management has destroyed our people!” And, Albert Einstein said, “You can’t solve a problem with same mind that created it!” It is time to adopt a new way of thinking about our organizations. We must view total experience of customer and not just total value of their account. If we look at that experience: CC + TIS + AI + TAOF + PNP + OTS + CI + OTOA = PO (Customer Contact + Timely Information and Solution + Available Inventory + Timely and Accurate Order Fill + Proper and Neat Packaging + On Time Shipping + Correct Invoicing + On Time Order Arrival = Perfect Order).

Of eight steps in this experience your warehouse is responsible for five of them. This means if your customers are not loyal which one of five areas in their experience did they have a problem with. If they remain loyal it is because your warehouse has trained them to be. We often hear that difference between a median and a high performing company is sum of, “Many Little Things!” It is actually one thing, your warehouse, which does many little things. In this age or computers, internet, buying groups and even war, a customer’s loyalty should not be questioned. What should be questioned is how they became way they are? And answer to that question is, “Because We Taught Them To Be!”